SWINDON

1952: An unnamed Swindon man was so impressed by his visit to the miniature railway at Coate Water that he got in touch with the Adver and suggested the track be expanded to travel all the way around the water, passing through the bird sanctuary and equipped with tunnels and cuttings. The railway’s management told us that as much as they would have liked to undertake such a project, it would cost as much as £5,000. The sum was a fortune in those days.

1952: Swindon-born Stanley Richardson, an English master at a Swiss school near the border with France, was taking his evening walk when a frontier guard asked him to interpret for three Englishmen who had parked their car on the French side and innocently strayed slightly into Switzerland. The three men turned out to be fellow Swindonians and one even recognised him.

1962: Swindon Library worker Mark Child, 19, who in later life would become a respected local historian and author, published a slim volume of verse called Poems Round the Lychgate. Mr Child, who lived in Pinnocks Place, Stratton St Margaret, had the book accepted by the first publisher he submitted it to.

1962: The latest issue of Vickers News, the in-house magazine of Vickers-Armstrong in South Marston, highlighted the various sports and activities available to staff. They included cricket, tennis, bowls, angling, archery and a motoring club. Archery Club secretary Bob Bauld wrote that two of the most recent recruits, Miss Miss C Ames and Mrs A Candy, showed great promise.

1973: British Leyland’s Austin Morris body plant in Swindon was tipped as having a major role in the building of a new Jaguar model. Described by the nationalised car firm as a continental-style sports tourer, the car was code named XJ27, but went into production in 1975 as the XJS and was part of the range for more than 20 years.

1973: Swindon firm Hambro Life Assurance thanked the Adver for helping it to find homes for a surplus of office supplies including files and folders. Within days of the problem being highlighted in the newspaper, all had been given away, mainly to school pupils, students, scouts and charities.

THE WORLD

1554: Mary I married Philip II of Spain.

1587: Christianity was banned in Japan.

1848: Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl, prime minister from 1902-05, was born in Scotland. He was foreign secretary from 1916-19 when he made his famous Balfour Declaration, promising the Zionists a homeland in Palestine.

1894: Walter Brennan, US actor who played character parts in more than 100 films and winner of three Oscars for best supporting actor, was born.

1907: Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s experimental camp, to test the feasibility of scouting, began on Brownsea Island, near Poole. Four days later, the Boy Scouts organisation was created.

1909: Louis Bleriot became the first man to fly across the Channel, flying his three-cylinder monoplane from near Calais to Northfall Meadow near Dover Castle.

1948: Bread rationing ended in Britain.

1959: The hovercraft, the SRN 1 as it was called, made its first English Channel crossing - from Dover to Calais - in a little over two hours.

1965: Former champion British boxer and nightclub owner Freddie Mills was found shot dead in his car in Soho.

1978: The first test-tube baby was born in Oldham General Hospital. It was a girl, and she was named Louise Joy Brown.

1989: Just 3.6 miles short of Dover, woman pilot Gloria Pullan had to ditch Louis Bleriot’s historic plane in the Channel while attempting to recreate his crossing in 1909.

2017: Heavy monsoons in western India, including the desert state of Rajasthan, resulted in more than 24,000 villagers being evacuated, along with multiple deaths.

BIRTHDAYS

Annie Ross, singer/actress, 88; Nicole Farhi, fashion designer, 72; Sheena McDonald, broadcaster, 64; Iman, model and wife of the late David Bowie, 63; Matt LeBlanc, actor, 51; Lord Nicholas Windsor, son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, 48; Kevin Phillips, former footballer, 45.